Good and bad news for China

Timothy Garton Ash is quite right (Comment, 16 April) about the reduction in foreign reporting in media in Britain - and everywhere else as far as I can see. But China appears to be the exception that proves the rule. The number of correspondents in China and the space they get in serious newspapers and broadcasting stations has increased in recent years, not to mention the flood of magazine features and analytical pieces, and plenty of books by correspondents distilling their experiences.

Of course Chinese officials do not like a lot of what is written about their country, but there is nothing new about that; complaints that foreign correspondents are insufficiently "understanding" or "objective" have been par for the course for many years. The Communist party's control of the domestic media and the difficulty of unearthing information deemed to be in any way sensitive cramp reporting by correspondents who draw on Chinese sources as the starting point for their work - not to mention travel restrictions to places like Tibet. But that has not stopped reporters covering everything from economic and social trends to farm reform and the revival of Confucianism.

The economics of the news business - or rather the perception by editors and management of where their best commercial interests lie - may have closed down a lot of foreign reporting, but US and UK newspapers keep bureaux, sometimes with several staffers, in Beijing and Shanghai. Given that, like the Communist leadership, their main focus is the economy in all its ramifications, rather than Tibet or other "anti-China" subjects, maybe that is a welcome sign in bad times.Jonathan Fenby London